Taking Rides from Strangers

I'm a big fan of the German train system, but, alas, it is rather expensive.

So, for the more cost-conscious among us, there is Mitfahrgelegenheit.  This is a well-developed, nation-wide rideshare program where you can search on the website and find a ride for a reasonable price.
It can be annoying to have to contact 10 different people before finding someone who a) actually responds and b) has space available, and I have had a few experiences of last-minute cancellations or standing distraught in Cologne because the ride I thought I'd arranged didn't pan out.  Yet, all in all, I think it's a great idea.

I'm sure that the much longer distances between cities is a reason why the US doesn't have such a system, but I also wonder if it has to do with trust.  I feel like Americans have an overly-developed sense of stranger danger and that the media has provided us with so many stories of murderous hitchhikers/rapist ride-givers that many people would have definite reservations about making use of such a system.  Because, after all, Mitfahrgelegenheit is really just a more organized and efficient (aka more German) form of hitchhiking. 
Personally, though, I've never thought twice about it.  I just spent 6 hours traveling alone with a strange man, and my biggest worry was trying to sustain my feigned interest in his endless conversation.

On another note, ridesharing seems to be a prime opportunity to learn aspects of random strangers' personal lives.
If I had to make a generalization about Germans, it would be that they are rather reserved - you generally have to know them a long time before they open up to you.
Not so when cruising the Autobahn with them.  When riding back from Berlin with a lady (who worked as a journalist and now as a therapist for traumatized kids and is therefore my career role model), she proceeded to tell me about how she knows how having an abortion can affect a woman because she had had one herself.
And, within 5 minutes of beginning our journey to Bonn, a fellow passenger told us all about her quasi-boyfriend: the entire story of how they met, how he wants her to be with him but can't commit, how she is considering leaving behind her friends and family and a job that she loves to be with him, and how she was now on her way, unannounced, to visit in a last-ditch effort to win him over.  I felt like I was in a soap opera.

Oh the people you meet.